The Living Poetry Project: Part 17
While in Berkley, I had many interesting conversation with my friend Johnny. (Johnny is always easy to talk too. Despite the time and distance between us, we are able to pick-up where we left off. Such friends are gifts.)
One of many interesting things Johnny told me was that chapbooks fly from the shelves at the distribution center where he works, while the full length collections have a tendency to slowly (slowly) meander their way to readers. It would make sense that lovers of compression would buy compressed books. (There is a lot more to be said on this topic, but pleasure before business–lets get to the poems.)
Alexis Vergalla chapbook, Letter Through Glass, is a beautiful example of a “little book” or rather big ideas bound tightly together by metaphor. Inquires into identity, loss, and an existential crisis all crafted to fit in a top-hat. Ah, poetry is magic and its rabbits are born ready to hump into more rabbits of scurry.
To share Vergalla’s poetry, I burned her poem “Before the Fires” into carving wood and left them on the hearth of a resteraunt. Hopefully these words will light their way to readers. Hopefully readers will follow the poem’s radiance.
